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Depositors Turn Up Heat on Ailing Spanish Banks - (online.wsj.com) Eugenio Nuñez Cobás stormed
into a bank branch in this coastal town one morning in August with three dozen
fellow customers yelling "Thieves! Thieves! Thieves!" Then they
returned to the street and pelted the facade with eggs, forcing the branch to
close for the day. Mr. Nuñez had been coming to the
Novagalicia Banco SA branch for eight months with a placard that reads: "I
have all my savings trapped in Novagalicia Banco until the year 2999." The
70-year-old retiree said: "I really should be at home playing with my
grandchildren. Instead, I'm here every week, fighting for my savings." Mr. Nuñez was one of more than 700,000 Spanish
depositors who poured money—in some cases their life savings—into high-yielding
preferred shares and subordinated bonds issued by their banks. When the
economic crisis erupted in Spain, the securities plunged in value, making it
effectively impossible to resell them.
The Patent, Used as a Sword - (www.nytimes.com) When Apple announced
last year that all iPhones would come with a voice-activated assistant named Siri,
capable of answering spoken questions, Michael Phillips’s heart sank. For three
decades, Mr. Phillips had focused on writing software to allow computers to
understand human speech. In 2006, he had co-founded a voice recognition
company, and eventually executives at Apple, Google and elsewhere proposed
partnerships. Mr. Phillips’s technology was even integrated into Siri itself
before the digital assistant was absorbed into the iPhone.
But in 2008, Mr. Phillips’s company, Vlingo, had been contacted by a much
larger voice recognition firm called Nuance. “I have patents that can prevent
you from practicing in this market,” Nuance’s chief executive, Paul Ricci, told
Mr. Phillips, according to executives involved in that conversation. Mr. Ricci
issued an ultimatum: Mr. Phillips could sell his firm to Mr. Ricci or be sued
for patent infringements. When Mr. Phillips refused to sell, Mr. Ricci’s
company filed the first of six lawsuits.
Euro zone to launch bailout fund with Spain in focus - (www.reuters.com) Euro zone finance ministers launched their
permanent 500 billion euro bailout fund on Monday but said Spain, the country widely expected to be
first to draw on it, was taking steps to overhaul its economy and did not need
a bailout for now. Arriving at a meeting in Luxembourg also set to discuss Greece and differences over how to
recapitalise Europe's wobbly banks, German Finance Minister Wolfgang Schaeuble
said Madrid had made clear it wanted no assistance. "Spain needs no aid
program. Spain is doing everything necessary, in fiscal policy, in structural
reforms," he told reporters as he arrived for a gathering that will also
discuss plans to establish a single supervisor for euro zone banks.
Europe’s Richer Regions Want Out - (www.nytimes.com) Catalonia may be the catalyst
for a renewed wave of separatism in the European Union, with Scotland and
Flanders not far behind. The great paradox of the European Union, which is
built on the concept of shared sovereignty, is that it lowers the stakes for regions
to push for independence. While a post-national European
Union may be emerging out of the euro zone crisis, with a drive for more fiscal
union and more centralized control over national budgets and banks, the crisis
has accelerated calls for independence from member countries’ richer regions,
angry at having to finance poorer neighbors.
Europe Still at Odds Over the Workings of Its Bailout Fund -
(www.nytimes.com) It has been referred to as
“the bazooka” — the 500 billion euro European bailout fund that after much dispute
will have its first board meeting on Monday. Dreamed up two years ago by euro
zone ministers and officials as a permanent weapon against any financial
problems that might besiege the region, the $650 billion bazooka might
eventually be aimed at Spain’s banking crisis. Or it could be wielded to scare off
bond market speculators who might otherwise try to drive up the borrowing costs
of beleaguered governments in Madrid or other euro zone capitals.
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